Stuck between a Pillow and a Soft Place – Anna Leigh’s 2023 Decision
Anna Leigh Waters, 16, World #1 Pickleball Player, Data-Driven WD Multi-Partner Analysis Report
pklmart, the premier pickleball site for data analytics, has published a seven page report entitled, “Stuck between a Pillow and a Soft Place – Anna Leigh’s 2023 Decision” that analyzes ten Women’s Doubles (WD) matches played by Anna Leigh Waters and her alternating Florida based partners: Catherine Parenteau and Anna Bright. Over 1,000 rallies and 10,000 shots were evaluated.
Introduction
It’s the hot topic of the pro tour in early 2023 – who is Anna Leigh (AL) going to play women’s doubles with for the near future? Who knows, but now that we’ve made it to Spring, let’s take a closer look at the differences between these two pairings, both in terms of strategies deployed and performance.
Analysis
The Delray Beach, FL, teenager has won every Women’s Doubles PPA event she has played with either partner. To understand the differences between the AL/CP and the AL/AB partnerships we’re going to dig much deeper than just looking at wins and losses.
Relative Workload
History suggests that whoever plays with Anna Leigh is likely to get targeted. This makes playing alongside AL a tricky scenario; not only do you need to perform at a high level, but you need to do so across a higher volume of shots than you may be used to. Data from other sports such as the NBA shows that performing effectively becomes more difficult as your usage rate increases (unclear if this is true in pickleball).
Looking at the percent of balls hit, we see that both Catherine and Anna were both mildly targeted. However, as we’ll see later, their high usage rates were also driven by the fact that they were less likely to speed balls up and thus engaged in extended dink rallies. (The complete seven page report is available here)
